Through Political Prism, Iraqis Grieve

Mr. Mimur, the council member who is an ethnic Turkmen, was in his second-floor office with the door closed when the attack began. Like many politicians in Iraq, he was wearing a pistol.

“I will go to the Turkmen dog,” he said he heard one of the gunmen say.

Mr. Mimur said he grabbed his Browning pistol from his left hip, opened the door and fired off round after round until he ran out of bullets.
“So I decided to save myself,” he said. “I had no choice but to jump from my window.”

For photo please click on: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/middleeast/06tikrit.html?_r=1

By TIM ARANGO Published: April 5, 2011

TIKRIT, Iraq — The people in the offices waited to die as the gunmen, wearing police uniforms and suicide vests, went door to door, tossing hand grenades and spraying gunfire. Days later, the provincial council headquarters here was a charnel house of smeared blood and burned flesh.

The New York Times

Nearly 60 died and more than 90 were wounded in Tikrit. “They killed eight here,” said Niyazi Mimur, a council member, as he stood in the office of a dead colleague. In another room he pointed at a bullet hole on a red and gold armchair and blood spatters on the wall. “They killed one here.” And on he went through the three-story building.

Nearly 60 died and more than 90 were wounded in last Tuesday’s brazen attack, which turned into a hostage standoff until Iraqi security forces retook the building. While violence in Iraq has ebbed in recent years, the assault on the provincial council in Saddam Hussein’s hometown was a stark reminder of what this country’s nascent democracy is up against: a stubborn insurgency and an army and police force that still have glaring deficiencies and suspect loyalties.

Those forces have been trained by an American military that is scheduled to leave the country at the end of the year and whose mission these days is mainly to advise and assist the Iraqis.

In Tikrit, local officials complained that the Americans did not do enough to help retake the building. After three days of mourning, in which a curfew and vehicle ban were imposed and shops and schools were shuttered, the other familiar ritual of Iraqi life began in Tikrit: processing grief through politics and recriminations.

“We were expecting something to happen, but not this big,” said Noor al-Samari, a member of Parliament from Salahuddin Province, which includes Tikrit. “The security forces are very weak.” An interview with Mr. Samari on Sunday was cut short after he received a call summoning him and local security officials to Baghdad to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the attack. Echoing several local leaders, he was highly critical of American forces for not being directly involved in the fight.

“They were close by but didn’t do anything,” he said. It is unclear if greater involvement by American soldiers — who have done their share of fighting over the last eight years and still die here, as two did on Saturday from enemy fire — would have altered the outcome. American forces responded initially before falling back to observe.

Whether the Americans did enough or not, Iraqi forces will soon be on their own. Without a political deal to keep the United States military here, as many among the military ranks of both sides would like, all forces are scheduled to leave by 2012. “I always say that the Iraqi security forces should be depending on themselves in these kinds of operations because the U.S. will no longer be here,” said Jasim Hussain Jbara, Salahuddin Province’s head of national security, an appointee of the federal government.

“But we did ask them for tear gas, and they did not give it to us. They said they needed an order, and their reaction was very slow.” The chairman of the provincial council, Youssef Hammood, escaped the attack by fleeing out a back door.

He monitored the siege from a local command center where, he said, police and army officials requested American support. “The Americans didn’t do anything,” Mr. Hammood said. “We asked for their help, we asked for tear gas, but they didn’t do anything.”

An American military spokesman in Baghdad said Monday that the Iraqis had asked for helicopters to mount an air assault. “U.S. forces assessed that the roof would likely not support the weight of the helicopter and therefore did not attempt this high-risk mission,” the spokesman said in an e-mailed statement.

Tear gas was not available, but the Americans provided aerial surveillance and advised the local police commander, the statement said. The Iraqi Army and the police were once considered rife with sectarianism, a constellation of militias and roving death squads that answered to individual leaders motivated by loyalty to sect instead of nation. That situation has improved but has not been eradicated.

Officials in Tikrit who have viewed security cameras that captured the initial stages of the attack said evidence suggested that forces guarding the building might have been involved. “Some people helped them from the inside,” said Sabhan Chead, the deputy chairman of the provincial council, who was in Baghdad for a conference on the day of the assault.

Mr. Chead said that no one had been arrested and that he could not say whether security forces suspected of involvement were still on the job. “We suspect some people from the inside,” he said, “but are waiting for the investigation.” The details of the attack remained murky. Witnesses, survivors and officials overseeing the investigation offered conflicting accounts, and no one could agree on the number of attackers. Some said two, some said five or six, others said close to a dozen.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization affiliated with Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility, saying in a statement on a Web site that there were two attackers.

The assault also raised the question of how a new democracy plagued by violence should balance security with accessibility for the people it was trying to serve. Mr. Hammood said the building was “open for people, and hundreds come every day.” Still, he said, local officials worried that such an attack might occur, and had agreed on new security measures but had not yet found the money in the budget to pay for them. Mr. Hammood and others spoke from inside a secure complex of palaces and mansions that was once home to Saddam Hussein and his family.

The council will meet there until its destroyed headquarters in the center of town is rebuilt.

Mr. Mimur, the council member who is an ethnic Turkmen, was in his second-floor office with the door closed when the attack began. Like many politicians in Iraq, he was wearing a pistol.

“I will go to the Turkmen dog,” he said he heard one of the gunmen say.

Mr. Mimur said he grabbed his Browning pistol from his left hip, opened the door and fired off round after round until he ran out of bullets. “So I decided to save myself,” he said. “I had no choice but to jump from my window.”


Duraid Adnan contributed reporting from Baghdad and Tikrit, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Tikrit.